Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin; Written by Himself. [Vol. 2 of 2]
With his Most Interesting Essays, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings; Familiar, Moral, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, Selected with Care from All His Published Productions, and Comprising Whatever Is Most Entertaining and Valuable to the General Reader

Text Comparison with Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America

A bottle so fixt cannot by
any means be electrised: the equilibrium is never destroyed: for while the
communication between the upper and lower parts of the bottle is continued
by the outside wire, the fire only circulates: what is driven out at
bottom, is constantly supply'd from the top.

Then taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a
finger of the other near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and
the shock was as violent as if the wire had remained in it, which shewed
that the force did not lie in the wire.

The operator, who holds the picture by the upper-end, where the
inside of the frame is not gilt, to prevent its falling, feels nothing of
the shock, and may touch the face of the picture without danger, which he
pretends is a test of his loyalty.

If a piece of common matter be supposed intirely free from electrical
matter, and a single particle of the latter be brought nigh, 'twill be
attracted and enter the body, and take place in the center, or where the
attraction is every way equal.

8, be electrified, or have an electrical atmosphere communicated to
it, and we consider every side as a base on which the particles rest and by
which they are attracted, one may see, by imagining a line from A to F, and
another from E to G, that the portion of the atmosphere included in F, A,
E, G,.

from the stroke
of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those
edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent
rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the
building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship, and
down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these pointed rods
probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came
nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and
terrible mischief?
21.